


The Consequences of Loving Again

by averynicecake



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Family, Female My Unit | Byleth, Flashbacks, Grief/Mourning, Loss of Parent(s), Memories, Post-Canon, Post-Silver Snow, Queen Byleth, can also be read as post Verdant Wind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:01:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23543569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/averynicecake/pseuds/averynicecake
Summary: “No. I would not trade your presence for anything; I have already had my share of loss in this world. I do not care to think of burying another body.”Byleth spoke to Jeralt’s memory as if he’d never left. It feels foolish to believe he spoke back, but what hope does he have for himself if the dead are truly unreachable?
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Seteth
Comments: 13
Kudos: 46





	The Consequences of Loving Again

_“What was your wife like?”_

Seteth wipes the dirt from his hands, callouses scratching against the linens of his robes, and rubs his fingers against one another until the skin grows warm with friction. He picks up the shovel from against the wall, shifts his grip up and down until the heft of the wood rests easily against his tired muscles. They ache from bruises and overuse. It would make him feel young again, were he not staring down the extent of his age.

_“Do you ask out of curiosity, or jealousy?”_

_“Neither,” she smiles, “I just never heard you speak of her.”_

The sun bears down on his back. The nape of his neck tickles as his hair mingles with the sweat.

_“You know well enough why that is the case.” She gives him a withering look. He sighs. “Very well. What would you like to know?”_

His boots clatter loudly as they tap against the uneven cobbles paving the palace grounds. Noble and commoner alike turn their heads to gawk. Seteth is a disciplined enough man to ignore their shameless staring, turned only more stoic by the crown upon his head – but oh, how he wishes he could stare back. Let them have a lick of the fire in his eyes and see if they do not crumple the way flowers wither under feet.

_“Was she kind?”_

He stiffens his entire body until his muscles are so tense, he can only focus on the burn of his wounds, stretched almost to splitting.

_“She was. She would always feed and clothe everybody else above herself. If there was a wound still to close, or an ill still to heal, she couldn’t rest until she had soothed it.”_

Acres of land lay out in front of his feet, lush and decorated, like a carpet unrolled for royalty – he supposes, in a way, that’s what it is. Yet, walking among the flowers and grasses, the trees freckling between blossom and leaf, the branches heavy with fruit… it feels fleeting. As if life will soon be shed like an overcoat in the spring, and all that will remain will be cold and naked.

_She hums, swaying her body from side to side. “Was she pretty?”_

Sick worry grips his stomach. How much longer will this last, before the last of her plants starve in the sun and die?

_He laughs, and sits by her side. She swings her legs into his lap and smiles. “Of course, I thought so. But her beauty was not so undeniable as yours, my love.”_

_His lips tingle with the whisper of a kiss. “Flatterer,” she hums into the space between them. “What did she look like?”_

_“I cannot describe with much accuracy the faces of centuries passed. She looked similar to how you would imagine Flayn will look in a few years’ time. Perhaps a little more… graceful.”_

Does he remember how to tend a garden? Did he ever really know?

_She kisses him again, less quick to pull away. “Was she brave?”_

The path to the greenhouse seems emptier than before. The echoes aren’t the same when it’s only one pair of boots.

_“That depends. In battle, sometimes. But she was the kind of woman to carry the world on her shoulders, even if it only broke her back.” He brings a hand between her shoulder blades, and cradles her into his chest. “I suppose, in that way, she reminds me of you.”_

The groundskeeper greets him at the door with a deep curtsey. She offers solemn words that ring empty through his ears as he hands back the shovel, and feels how his palms have grown hot with sweat from carrying it. Every fibre of his body is straining, still, when he reaches to firmly shake her hands. He can never quite understand why the common folk revere his touch so.

She clings to his touch, her own hands covered in filth. One arm gestures to the back of the greenhouse, where a young woman with tumbling green hair sits hunched over a flowerpot, gently cupping the petals of a delicate blossom, letting its head bounce over her fingers. Flayn does not look up at the call of her name. Instead, she picks up the pot, and traipses over to her father’s side – yes… Father. Enough time has passed now that she can freely address him how they have wished for so long, and though it is wonderful to see how far their world has come, it feels empty. Unfilled.

_Gentle hands curl around his skin, and she nuzzles into his neck, the heat of his blood warm against her lips. “Are we similar in many ways?”_

_As any man would, asked the same question, he balks. “You both are individuals. It would be unfitting to make a comparison. You both are powerful women, and-”_

_“Seteth.”_

_He sighs defeatedly. “Yes. And no. In terms of trivialities, you’re more alike than I had thought possible.”_

Grasping Seteth’s hands no longer, the groundskeeper starts waxing poetic to her about the meaning of the plant she carries. Forget-me-nots. Flayn knows what the flowers represent, of course. She has spent centuries in practice not to give away her true age, listening politely – and often curiously – to people talk about the wonders of the world, and trying to see it all through new eyes. Nothing is new to the pair of them. He wonders now if she is even listening at all.

Quietly, she asks if she may take the flowers with her. The woman nods, tells her of course, that she’s honoured, asks who they are for. Flayn looks at her, expression hovering squarely between indignation and incredulity. She answers with a single word. She guides her father away before the colour finishes draining from the groundskeeper’s face.

As they walk back through the gardens, Seteth feels a tug at his sleeve. There is strong paternal instinct in him still, he thinks, reflexively reaching for his daughter’s hand. Her grip is like iron – he thinks of it somewhat like a handcuff, tethering him so he does not drift, but too cold and hard to be of much comfort.

He knows, without looking at her face, that she is hurting; her breath trembles and her footsteps are quick. Flayn loves to loiter in the palace gardens, given the chance. She shirks her duties as Princess of the United Kingdom of Fodlan, and is seen intermingling with the common folk who tend to the crops just as often as she had before she inherited her title. Seteth reminisces warmly on the time she had caught her parents in near-fury with her absentmindedness – how she had so proudly invited them to look at the first bloom of the flowers she planted. Her eyes had been bright and shining and her small body had shivered with excitement, so much so that they quickly forgot any trace of anger and spent the afternoon planting a bed of forget-me-nots together. Whatever raw passion that drove them to kneel in the earth like common men is absent from her delicate features now. She is unblinking, and she frowns, the lines etching her face speaking of age and pain that no mere human could begin to fathom – all the loss and everything this cold world has stolen from her reflected in her expression like blotches of ink across soft, pale parchment. Flayn is a woman, now – at least, she is as tall and willowy as she ever will grow – and it scares her father to watch her drift away. She consoles his worry in her own way; with her delicate grasp and the daintiness of her shoes with heels that click in clumsy rhythms.

_Her head perks. “Trivialities?”_

_“You are around the same height she was when she took human form. You both have pale skin and green eyes, and you share a fondness for fishing. You write with the same hand, you laugh when I am too formal, and your first instinct when you wake up is to smile.”_

His arm pulls taut at the crossroads between the orchards and the graveyard. Potted forget-me-nots lean their terracotta weight suddenly in his open palms, and he watches his daughter approach an apple tree, branches seemingly bowing toward her as she tilts her head and reaches out for it the same way she greets a friend. She plucks fruit into her arms – one, two, and then more hesitantly a third – and turns to continue their walk as if she hadn’t left. The way she leads without turning back is reminiscent of their days of war. Seteth’s eyes burn with sadness. It’s been too long since he allowed himself to grieve.

Upon their arrival, Flayn sets down her fruit in the grass, and hoists her skirt to kneel in the dirt as she had done so many years ago. Seteth settles beside her, unbothered by the yield of soft earth beneath his weight or the slick filth that his heels embed into. He holds the flowerpot to his chest and leans against the brick railings of the stairs, letting the cool of stone spread through his robes and skin, relishing its iciness cloaking the raging ache in his heart. Gentle fragrance from the flowers flutters in his lungs. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. He pictures the graveyard at Garreg Mach. He doesn’t remember the names of those buried there anymore. The victims of war, nameless, faceless, forgotten, killed with violence in the name of peace, only after their lives ended was their sacrifice found to not be in vain, and how cruel of the Goddess to let them die without first knowing whether to be at peace or in anguish. Yet he doesn’t feel their anger any longer. Where there once was outrage there is only a sharp and bleeding pain for the only name he remembers, who died trusting his child would live. Jeralt Eisner never got to see the reality of what his child decreed would come to pass. His passing gave such significance to Byleth’s journey, and he never knew. Perhaps he sees from another plane of existence, the beauty that his daughter seeded into Fodlan’s soil, watched her triumph over darkness, find her footing in the new world she created.

_“You are also completely different. You are far more outspoken and self-assured. You don’t shy from the consequences of your actions as she did, but you stand your ground. You’re headstrong. You back me into a corner when I’m wrong. You’re not afraid to be selfish, when you need to be.”_

She rarely spoke of him, but she would visit his grave so often when her journey brought her to her knees, be it from joy or the pain of destruction. She spent the last few hours of her wedding night at the foot of her father’s gravestone. Byleth spoke to Jeralt’s memory as if he’d never left. It feels foolish to believe he spoke back, but what hope does he have for himself if the dead are truly unreachable?

Soft hands glide over his skin and wipe away tears from his prickling eyes. He smiles at his daughter, clutching her fingers to his mouth and kissing her knuckles gently. She flinches away as any grown child does, but, looking between the grave at their feet and the flowerpot in his lap, she overrides her instinct and smiles. She looks so like himself, with such striking eyes determinedly stoic, that he casts aside the glamour of King and allows himself to be a man stricken with grief. He sniffles loudly and grossly, sobs into the moving air with no handkerchief to mop up his face, nor sleeve to wipe his eyes on. Flayn stares at him for a long and suffering moment. He gathers her into his chest, knocking the flowers onto the ground, and they hold each other with the strength of fresh anguish to cry against one another’s skin. Seteth has prided himself for far too long on immunity to emotion. Family has taught him that it is okay to be human – to be beautifully, honestly open, and to receive the support of a _person_ without the burden of expectation.

_“I had never imagined a lover could understand me so well. You know what I am thinking before I have even begun to process the thought, and you often have a solution to the world’s problems that the world has never seen before.”_

Eventually, their tears dry, and they come to rest in silence in each other’s company. Flayn reaches over him and gathers the soil back into its container. He apologises for his clumsiness, but she shakes her head, and remarks that the flowers won’t be bothered by a little bit of turmoil. It feels almost like she’s talking about herself; she had taken to her second mother so eagerly, but she seems more at peace with her loss than Seteth will ever be. Unapologetically, she mourns, and still with grace and determination, she pushes the soil from the freshly turned dirt of the grave and unearths the flowers to plant them in a new home – nestled alongside those who will never be forgotten.

Even her headstone is beautiful among the sharp corners of every other slab of granite that sets the graveyard’s pattern like rows of teeth.

It’s lovingly painted with golden foil in the shape of her crest, and smoothed at the corners, winking in the sun. He sees in it her figure, elegant and strong. He feels the roughness of her grip contrasted with the softness of her skin.

_“You touch me more confidently than I was used to before. You know what you want. And yet, your hands still hold mine with the same gentle touch you use to tend the gardens and befriend the creatures in them. I find you beautiful. I find you fascinating.”_

_Her joy dances through her eyes the same way sparks fly from a bonfire. “You don’t ever wish I was more like her?”_

Those curious eyes that lit up with expression that her face would scarcely betray seem to glimmer at him from the crosses within the Crest of Flames, staring up with every inch of love and fierce protection that she ever felt for him. It is overwhelming.

_“Well, it might be nice if you let me win an argument just once.” She swats at his shoulder. He catches her fingers in line with his own and rubs circles against the bump of her thumb. He is too fearful to tell her how precious she is. “No. I would not trade your presence for anything; I have already had my share of loss in this world. I do not care to think of burying another body.”_

Flayn finishes transferring the forget-me-nots, and rests back on her heels. She bends over to pass her father an apple, and takes one for herself. She bites into it and lets the juice dribble over her chin without care for keeping up appearances, and he follows in her image. There is some small joy to be had about the stickiness of the nectar trickling through his beard. Leaning forward, close enough to read the writing on his dear wife’s grave, he takes the last apple, and kisses its sweet skin softly.

_To his surprise, she only grins. “You don’t have anything to worry about,” she says._

He takes Flayn’s hand and places the fruit at the head of the grave, where her mouth lies silent under the earth. He whispers a prayer. He likes to think that Byleth whispers back.

_“I don’t plan on dying any time soon.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Don't write much angst. Gave it a shot. I like the idea of Seteth's memories waning over time to give rise to new love, and it felt right to build off that with the consequences of allowing himself to feel again.
> 
> Feedback and kind words are always appreciated - constructive criticism also welcomed warmly. This is not beta-read, because my usual beta reader seems to have dropped off the face of the earth!
> 
> You can find this on my art/writing tumblr at birdfussy.tumblr.com


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